He escaped after trying to lure the masked teens away from his two friends by running — they chased him, but eventually returned to the others on the lot, beating them beyond recognition.

"They were real cowards," he said.

Alex Rios, 18, Nathaniel Carillo, 16 and Gilbert Tafoya, 15, were arrested shortly after the bodies were found and confessed — admitting they had been attacking the homeless for a year and had assaulted dozens in just the last few months, according to court papers.

"They were real cowards."

All three were ordered held on $5 million bond after a Monday afternoon arraignment. Prosecutors said they intend to charge Carillo and Tafoya as adults under the state's serious youthful offender statute.

Detectives are trying to track down other victims by reviewing unsolved homicides and talking to transients about attacks that may not have been reported, Officer Simon Drobik told NBC News.

"Because of the nature of the violence they committed on these victims, this isn't the first time they done this," Drobik said. "We believe they did commit other crimes like this."

Skeets said that he is not homeless but went to the field to drink and hang out with "Al," an older man he described as his brother or uncle. A third man he knew only as "Cowboy" and a female acquaintance were also there.

"We were just quietly sleeping and watching the night skies and they jumped on us," he said. "They cheap-shotted us."

He said he got up and fought with the attackers but could not fend them off.

"Right when I picked up Al, they hit him with a bat, hit him right across the face. And someone hit me with a cinderblock and then they hit me with the bat," said Skeets, who had ugly bruises across his back and torso and a swollen knee.

Skeets and the woman managed to escape, but the suspects showed no mercy to the men who couldn't get away, police said.

The teens told police they used their hands, bricks, a metal fence pole and wooden sticks to bludgeon the victims.

"All three of them took turns picking cinder blocks over their heads and smashing them into the male subject's faces," according to the criminal complaint.

The suspects variously estimated the attack went on anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour.